


not long hidden

by werepope (quiteparadise)



Category: Peter Rabbit (2018), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, This Is Where I Leave You (2014)
Genre: Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 01:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18420489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiteparadise/pseuds/werepope
Summary: Bea and Thomas love each other. It's anyone's guess what Phillip feels. Self-satisfaction, maybe.





	not long hidden

Part of Bea is disappointed to not find a welcome home party waiting for her when she walks in the house. The other part of her is exhaustedly grateful that it’s only Phillip, craning around on the sofa to greet her.

“So, how was it?” he asks, watching unhelpfully as she sets down bags and sheds her coat.

She can hear the happiness in her own sigh. “Wonderful. The children were so fantastic. They’re just--”

“Miracles. Yeah.”

“I’ll spare you,” Bea laughs. “Is Thomas..?” She points upstairs, but Phillip shakes his head.

“Kitchen. Getting fancy with lunch.”

Bea looks back toward the pile of her luggage with a lurch of horror. Sitting on the foyer table is a wax paper bag from Pret a Manger, one edge crusted with a smear of icing from where she’d eaten half a cinnamon roll while standing up in the airport terminal, ravenous and desperate.

“Phillip,” she hisses, as Thomas calls out from the kitchen, but Phillip is already springing up from the sofa and striding around to whisk it out of view. He’s on his way up the stairs before Thomas emerges, smiling beatific relief that she can’t help but mirror.

Thomas is warm and solid and smells only a little of half-familiar cologne, and she’s so happy to be back in his arms that she melts into him for a long moment, clasping him tightly against her.

“I missed you,” he says, warm and sweet into her hair, and she sighs a reply that she loses happily to his shoulder. They stay like that until Phillip comes thumping back down the stairs. Bea can’t see how satisfied he looks with himself, but she can hear it in Thomas’s voice: “Come say hello.”

Bea releases Thomas dutifully and Phillip envelops her in a genial hug, stooping down to rest his chin on her shoulder. Bea pats his back. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Phillip releases her to snag Thomas by the sleeve, reel him in more enthusiastically, and drop a brief kiss against his mouth. “Now that my relief is here,” he says, letting Thomas swat his hand out of the careful cuffing of his plaid. “You two have fun. I’ll call you when I’m back in the States.”

Thomas is more prim than necessary, considering, but Phillip is patient enough after five days alone with him that he only pouts a little before gathering up his own meager luggage and heading out. Thomas follows him out only after receiving an eyebrow wiggle of encouragement from Bea, who doesn’t need to watch to know they’re having a warmer parting at the car.

She checks on lunch: zucchini frittata, asparagus and goat cheese sandwiches, beet salad, and the kitchen already spotlessly clean, not so much as a rumpled hand towel to indicate that a mess has ever existed here. She loves Thomas, she really does, but she’d give a king’s ransom for a dirty dish some days.

“Shall we eat outside?” she calls, pulling a tablecloth and napkins from the pantry. “I did have a good time, it was wonderful to meet everyone, but I missed being home. Terribly.”

When he comes into the kitchen, she crushes the linens between them to kiss him, slow and sweet. His fingers twitch on her waist to relieve her of them, she can feel it, but he doesn’t pull away before she does, smiling too hard to do more than risk laughing into his mouth.

“You were missed terribly,” he says, and nudges her toward the door.

She sets the patio table while he lays out the food, and for awhile they enjoy navigating around each other again, settling into the pleasure of existing together. Bea talks at all the length she wants, gesturing broadly and pausing to show him pictures only occasionally, and she eats more than she had bargained for, maybe just out of sheer gratitude.

“How was it here?” she asks finally, when they’ve moved on from lemonade to wine, giving up on the notion of getting anything else accomplished until at least the evening. “How was Phillip? He seemed in good spirits.”

“He’s always in good spirits.”

Bea makes a sound of mildly dubious assent. “He’s back to Massachusetts, then?”

“Connecticut,” Thomas corrects, picking an almond out of his salad with the delicacy of a jeweler selecting a diamond.

“Is it? We should visit some time. You could be spared a few days, with the proper preparation, and it would be nice to have a guide,” she says, leaning toward him appealingly. “If we decided to venture down to New York for a day?”

Thomas is as unimpressed with the idea now as he had been the first time she proposed it, but he’s softened by her recent return, can’t outright decline. Instead he offers: “Maybe. When we get more help at the shop.”

“Well I’m glad you two had a good time, anyway.”

Thomas stands up to clear dishes. Bea saves her wine glass from the cleanup, refills it.

“There’s not point being coy, you know. I can ask Phillip. He’ll tell me everything,” she says.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Thomas says, quickly this time but speaking toward the sink. “It was fine. He was fine. It’s just-- It’s awkward for me. I know I’m being prudish.”

Bea wraps her arms around his narrow waist, kisses his sun-warm shoulder. “You’re not being a prude, darling. I promise. If you’d rather not talk about it, we don’t have to. I just want you to know that you can.” She squeezes him as tightly as she can, until he squeaks with it, and retreats before he can retaliate with soapy water.

“We had a good time,” he says, when she takes up a towel to dry. “It was nice to have him.”

“I’m glad,” Bea assures him. “And I hope he tired you out, because I am far too exhausted to do anything tonight except take an Ambien.”

He splashes her, soaking himself almost as much as the floor, she swats him with the towel, and if Thomas didn’t already sanitize the butcher block after cooking, he will after hoisting her up onto it.

…

“I think we should offer him a room,” Bea says later, carding her fingers through Thomas’s hair where he lays against her chest. His reply is so long in coming she would think him asleep, if she couldn’t feel him chewing his lip.

“I don’t know,” he finally offers. “I don’t think he’s the type.”

“For what?” she laughs. “Monogamy?”

He shifts away from her, and she lets him go, but she rolls onto her side to follow, to lean up over him and kiss along his profile.

“He was cheating with me on two different people when we met. That’s… a lot. Inviting him in, asking him for something more permanent than this. I don’t know.”

“I like him,” Bea says. “Yes, he can be a little much. I can’t argue that. But we get along just fine, and you adore him. Besides, he’s only in the country every couple months. We should consider offering to share our home with him when he is. We have the room.”

“I’m sure he already has someone who’s giving him room,” Thomas says.

Bea nods. “He probably does. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t prefer to be here.”

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

Thomas rolls over to be little spoon, and Bea snugs up behind him. They have weeks and weeks before Phillip is back in England. Between the two of them, she's sure they can bring Thomas around.


End file.
